My muse this week is Kendall Matthews. Kendall is the VP of Global Marketing at AppointmentPlus and a Serial Entrepreneur.

WHY KENDALL QUALIFIES TO BE ONE OF THE 2016 FEARLESS THIRTEEN.

A mutual friend of ours Chris Ronzio, owner of Organize Chaos, invited me to hear Kendall and several other wildly successful Phoenix business people speak about getting more done. I was impressed with the entire panel quite frankly, which did not surprise me since I am very much impressed with Chris himself. Water seeks it’s own level.

Kendall and I have met several times since our first meeting and we are like-minded people. We are both voracious readers and on fire for helping business owners to fear less and do more. We are relationship people. Kendall has helped take AppointmentPlus from a three million dollar company to a ten million dollar company, and you can see why when you meet him. He is a go getter and go giver.

The three biggest things that impress me the most about Kendall are:

He has an intense owner mind set at AppointmentPlus

He is aggressive and on fire in a way that makes you respect him right away.

He is a go giver and a go-getter.

In a Nutshell….

Kendall is a natural connector. He loves to connect individuals with the right solutions that will solve their problems at AppointmentPlus and through his thirteen digital web properties that serve an individual’s real estate and insurance needs. He believes, like I do, that partnering with others makes the sum total of the whole so much better than the parts.

FEARLESS INTERVIEW

Kendall took a few minutes out to answer the five Art of Fearlessly Doing Business Questions.

WHAT CAN WE LEARN FROM KENDALL ABOUT BEING FEARLESS?

1.) An Owner’s Mind Set

Kendall is the VP of Global Marketing yet he treats AppointmentPlus like it is his own company. This is an owner’s ultimate dream, to have a highly skilled, proven producer like Kendall Matthews take your company under his wing and help triple its revenue during his tenure.

2.) Get the Right People to Say Yes!

Kendall is also a natural sales person. He understands the psychology of yes, yes, yes. The idea that if you can get your prospect to say yes enough times that they buy. He works with business owners helping them connect with other business owners. He understands that creating the right experience is so much more important than creating the right product. The product is ever evolving in software, real estate and healthcare. These markets are fickle and he understands that a customer is less likely to give up and say no if they are having the right experience.

3.) Feel the Fear and Do It Anyway

Step out in faith when you do not know all the answers. Feel the fear and then do it anyway. The fear of the unknown will always be there in the software industry, in real estate and in healthcare. Kendall has chosen areas of expertise that are ever evolving and sometimes volatile. He cannot and does not let a little thing like the fear of the unknown slow him down.

4.) Progress Not Perfection

Within the first thirty seconds of meeting Kendall you know that he is a perfectionist and somewhat of a Type A. He understands that he has to balance out the crazy Type A manic work ethic with a humane work life balance. He often brags about his wife and their long term marriage. Smart man. He has learned to curb his need for “just right” with more “good enough” thinking. Perfectionism is cumbersome and time consuming. One has to settle for progress not perfection because it is smart business and quite honestly more human

5.) Focus on Giving More

Kendall chooses to focus on being a servant leader. Servant leadership is both a leadership philosophy and set of leadership practices. Wikipedia says it perfectly; traditional leadership generally involves the accumulation and exercise of power by one at the “top of the pyramid.” By comparison, the servant-leader shares power, puts the needs of others first and helps people develop and perform as highly as possible. By giving more rather than getting more, he gets the job done. When he focuses on relationships, on what he can give and on how he can help, the business naturally follows. Kendall also educates himself to that end. He looks to leaders who have been successful before him and he emulates them. Leadership training is a must for him. When he reflects on where his business has grown from, he recognizes that it has always been from creating referable relationships.

Thank you so much Kendall for taking the time out to be one of the Fearless 13! I look forward to seeing you again at the Art of Fearlessly Doing Business Art Opening on May 14th at the Walter Gallery from 7-10PM.

Note from the ArtistKENDALL’S ILLUSTRATION’S STORY:

In the video you will notice that there is a white elephant and a Darth Vader head on the desks. Both of these characters are totems for Kendall. I chose to focus on the elephant symbol. Elephants are rich in cultural symbolism with the following characteristics that Kendall also embodies: having an excellent memory, the ability to recognize their tribe members, and the inherent nature to network and building life-long meaningful relationships. Kendall is a master at creating meaningful relationships in all his endeavors. He is a connector. He looks at every experience that he has with his customers, colleagues and co-workers as a learning experience, and then is smart enough to remember what he learns. For me, having a memory like an elephant means knowing when you have met a tribe member worthy of connection and then maintaining that connection through time and space. I believe that Kendall and I knew we were of the same tribe the moment we met. We got together to build our relationship very quickly after our first meeting. Elephants can recognize a member of their tribe after decades of not seeing them. The bond formed by an elephant is a lifetime bond. Elephants also are among a very exclusive group of animals that recognizes themselves in the mirror. I believe this speaks to the amount of personal self-development work Kendall devotes himself to. He knows who he is and he can look himself in the mirror without fear of not recognizing himself. I chose to focus on the silhouette tribe and not just the one elephant for this illustration.